


The Saga of Blake and Avon: An Interplanetary Myth For All Seasons

by Sondra



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra





	The Saga of Blake and Avon: An Interplanetary Myth For All Seasons

  
    When Avon, the one most likely to endure  
    Met Blake, the one most likely to endear  
    A bond was forged which spanned the galaxy.  
    Some bonds are built of love and some of hate.  
    Life's strongest bonds are built of mutual mystic incompletion:  
    A voiceless yearning for unity  
    Which shakes the cosmos to its core,  
    Till what men think they "want" (or don't)  
    Is swept aside, irrelevant and paltry.

    Avon roams star-studded skies  
    A regal, solitary figure draped in black,  
    Unruffled by danger, undaunted by pain,  
    Playing nerve-wracking games of brinkmanship with style,  
    Laughing at loss and gaily tossing gain  
    Back into the pot labelled "up for grabs",  
    Behaving as if nothing at all matters  
    To hide from derisive and trivializing eyes  
    What really does.  
    (But not from Blake's eyes; it isn't possible to hide  
             from Blake's eyes.)

    The woman who said:  
    "Beneath that cold exterior beats a heart of pure stone"  
    Was wrong.  
    Beneath that heart of pure stone seethes a boiling volcano:  
    A passion barely containable,  
    Dwarfing all the "only human" feeling  
    Of a Dayna and a Tarrant and a Vila  
    Put together.  
    (But only Blake sees it, for only Blake in his own selfless purity              
               does not fear it.)

    Avon, all your life you have been selfish in principle  
    (Though not in practice).  
    In isolated, fleeting moments  
    The mask you've worked so carefully to put together  
    Slips ever so slightly, permitting tiny lighted cracks  
    To pierce the darkness...

    Avon's honor's not an easy thing to understand.  
    (Except for Blake who doesn't need to understand it--  
               only trust it.)  
    Avon's honor's like a flame that won't go out  
    Despite the oceans of cynicism he tries to drown it in.  
    Avon's honor leads him straight into a Federation torture chamber  
    Where coldly, calculatingly, he endures the agonies of hell  
    To track the man who killed the woman he believes endured  
              the same for him.  
    (Then he learns she did not die and only feigned her love  
               to trap him.  
    And when she tries to shoot him, he just as coldly cuts her down.)

    Avon tells the world that Avon needs, loves, trusts no one.     
    Avon tells himself that Avon needs, loves, trusts no one.  
    Avon reads the players on the stage he fancies life to be  
    With penetrating and uncanny accuracy  
    --Except the one too real to be reduced to script,  
    The one he makes a constant show of scorning  
    Because he cannot bear to face  
    The total awe he feels for him.

    Blake is Avon's unacknowledged conscience.  
    Blake's a blazing bonfire of dazzling splendor  
    Who burns for others without a thought of self:  
    The one "achievement" Avon cannot--for all his cunning,  
               intellect and courage--claim.  
    The memory of Blake haunts Avon like an insatiable itch.  
    The essence of Blake lures Avon like a magnet.

    In that final fatal moment when they face each other soul to soul,  
    Avon fails to understand that all his cunning, intellect & courage               
               mean nothing.  
    Avon fails to understand that he doesn't need to understand--   
               just trust.  
    In that final fatal moment Avon thinks himself betrayed  
    By the purity he mocked, but needed more than life itself  
    And, stripped of all his armor, strikes out and destroys  
    The man he most respects in all the world.

      One by one they drop like dominoes:  
      Dayna...  
      Vila...  
      Soolin...  
      Tarrant...  
      Avon does not even see it--Avon sees only Blake:  
                  Sees Blake's eyes as he falls dying,  
                  Hears Blake's voice whispering his name,  
                  Feels Blake's hand clutching at his coat...  
                            "Avon, it's me--Blake.  
                             Avon, I was waiting for you.  
                             Avon..."

    And now the enemy is closing in around him,  
    A dozen guns aimed at him from every corner in the room.  
    Calm and poised and unafraid  
    He straddles Blake's body in a gesture of protection.  
     Is he thinking: "Thank God Blake didn't see the others die"  
            (remembering how Blake fell apart when Gan was lost)?  
     Is he thinking: "There's no way out this time, but I don't care"   
            (not really wanting to survive what he's done)?  
     Is he thinking at all\--or just finally, at long last, feeling:  
            Feeling the anguish of having destroyed  
                 the noblest part of himself...  
           Mixed with the joy of discovering that Blake  
                 didn't betray him after all...?        
   
    As the troopers move in, he raises his weapon.        
    It's not rational to think of shooting back against such odds,  
    It's not rational at all.  
    To go down fighting for the sheer symbolism of it  
    Is not something "Avon" would ever do...  
    But it is something "Blake" would do.  
    An enigmatic smile forms on his lips.  
    He squeezes the trigger  
    And with that final act  
    Reunites the severed cosmos.


End file.
